The woman contracted a fatal infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba and died eight days after developing symptoms.
A Texas woman died from an infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba days after she cleaned her sinuses using tap water, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case report.
The woman, an otherwise healthy 71-year-old, developed “severe neurologic symptoms,” including fever, headache and an altered mental status, four days after she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite, the CDC report said.
She was treated for primary amebic meningoencephalitis — a brain infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba.” Despite treatment, the woman experienced seizures and died from the infection eight days after she developed symptoms, the agency said.
They even make nasal irrigation devices with built-in filters! Mine’s a store brand from a local pharmacy.
You want sterile, not filtered, water
Turns out mine’s not store brand, it just looks generic enough to be store brand. They claim it meets CDC recommendations for nasal rinsing with tap water. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yes. Using tap water is safe.
And you’re supposed to boil the tap water
Not according to the literature that comes with the device.
Do they say you don’t have to boil it?
Or do they just not explicitly mention tbr obvious?
Source: PDF instructions from the page I previously linked to.
I wouldn’t trust that product. The labelling is misleading - this isn’t drinking water, so the same precautions don’t apply. If they don’t provide safe instructions, there’s no guarantee that they used safe materials.
Yeah, they’re just expecting that you boil it. Because even bottled water, you’re gonna have to boil before using it as a nasal rinse